Opinion: Education reform in Washington: Promising new policies await adequate funding (via Seattle Times)
Washington state Senator Rosemary McAuliffe writes, “While our education-reform efforts over the past 20 years have defined the expectations for our educational system, the recent McLeary decision confirmed that the promise of resources to support these reforms has gone unfulfilled. We must now find the funding to support imperative education reforms so every child has a high-quality education.”

“Suspension rates at the city’s charter schools ranged from 0 percent to 60 percent during the 2010-11 school year, according to state data. However, schools self-report their suspension and expulsion rates. In the past, discrepancies and errors have been found in some of the data.

Across the country, school suspension and expulsion rates have soared in recent decades, with Louisiana posting particularly high numbers. Louisiana schools expel students at five times the national rate, and they issue out-of-school suspensions at twice the rate of the rest of the country, according to a 2010 report by Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. ”

I guess that high suspension rate is one of the flexible things charter schools get to do. And I thought New Orleans was this great model for change. Interesting.